Mark Hurdhttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/mark-hurd
en-usTue, 03 Mar 2015 16:13:32 -0500Tue, 03 Mar 2015 16:13:32 -0500The latest news on Mark Hurd from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-full-interview-2015-1We Had A Surprisingly Fun Conversation With Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. This Is What He Told Us (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-full-interview-2015-1
Mon, 26 Jan 2015 12:47:02 -0500Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54c2da20ecad04443a306892-1200-924/mark-hurd-smiling.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd smiling"></p><p>In September, nearly <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/170532">four years to the day after joining Oracle</a>, Mark Hurd<a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2296051"> became CEO</a>, a job he's sharing with Oracle's other CEO, long-time finance chief, Safra Catz.</p>
<p>We were told in no uncertain terms that their title was not "co-CEO," but simply "CEO," by the way.</p>
<p>This is the third CEO job for Hurd in a long and sometimes rocky journey. We met with Hurd in the executive offices of Oracle in Redwood City to talk about how he got here. (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-mind-of-oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-2015-1">Here are some more anecdotes of Hurd's journey and management style at Oracle.</a>)</p>
<p>We found Hurd to be a cheerful, tough, but funny guy. He is who he is and you are never left guessing as to what he's thinking.</p>
<p>He cracked jokes throughout our talk, most of them preceded with the words "off the record ..." which, naturally, we honored. (We'll share what we can, just to give you a taste.)</p>
<p>He's full of opinions and not (at all!) shy about expressing them in his fast East Coast accent, although he wasn't willing to put them all of them on the record. We wrangled him on that as best we could. (One thing you quickly learn about Hurd: he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do.)</p>
<p>Many of his personal stories indicated that this is man who loves competition, particularly winning, something he clearly shares with Oracle founder Larry Ellison.</p>
<p>And yet he seems open to constructive criticism, at one point even asking for our opinion on the columns and blog posts he writes, and taking our less-than-glowing remarks in stride.</p>
<p>Here's a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.</p>
<p><strong>Business Insider: You're a family man, aren't you? Husband, father? Tell us about you family.</strong></p>
<p><strong><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54c2dae66bb3f7e5778045e9-1200-2000/mark_hurd_wife_paula_hurd.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd Paula Hurd">Mark Hurd: </strong> My family, I’m very much protective of them. I have two girls, one’s in her early 20s just graduated from college, one’s in her late teens just going into college. They’re great kids and their dad loves them a lot. I have a wife who’s a great mom.</p>
<p><strong>BI: How long have you been married?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH:</strong> Going on 25 years.</p>
<p><strong>BI: This is your first marriage?</strong></p>
<p>What I'll say is that these kids are by my wife’s first husband.</p>
<p><strong>BI: But are they by your wife’s husband’s first wife?</strong></p>
<p>[<em>Laughing.</em>] Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>BI: I understand that you attended college on a tennis scholarship at Baylor, a Christian school. Tell me a little bit about how you grew up.</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong>I grew up in New York City and I moved to Florida in high school. I got to Miami in 9th grade and I started playing tennis. And I wasn’t all that good. I started playing every day from the day I got there until the day I left.</p>
<p>And every day I just got better until the point where I earned a scholarship to college. I went from being not very competitive, to being competitive nationally during high school.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Were you ranked?</strong></p>
<p>MH: I was ranked Top 10 in the state of Florida (which was more competitive than New York).</p>
<p>I was good enough to get scholarship offers from most of the good tennis schools with the exception of the very best. At that time USC, UCLA, and Stanford were really the top-rung tennis programs and Baylor was really good. It is now a top-rung tennis program.</p>
<p><strong>BI: In large part because of you. [<em>Hurd is on Baylor's board of regents and has donated so generously to Baylor's tennis program<a href="http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&amp;story=63839"> that they named the tennis building after him</a></em>.]&nbsp;</strong><strong>Did you dream of being a pro?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Yeah, sure.</p>
<p><strong>BI: So why didn’t you do that?</strong></p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54c2db36eab8eab00a861f38-431-323/baylor-hurd-tennis-center.jpg" border="0" alt="Baylor Hurd Tennis Center"><strong>MH:&nbsp;</strong>The simple reason was that I wasn’t good enough.&nbsp;</p>
<p>I got of out of college and I was beating really good guys, but not good enough to be a [Roger] Federer, to be the best. Let’s say I was good enough to tour for 10 years. By the time I’m done, I’m 31 or 32, I may have a family. I may have no other work experience. My ability to go back [into business] and start at the bottom rung, it’s just tough. It’s tough to re-enter the work force.</p>
<p><strong>BI: So ultimately you’re a realist?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Well, I made a commitment to myself, in my senior year, that I would make a judgement whether I was good enough to pop. So I played some pro tournaments right after I got out of college. I did, “ok” and “ok” isn’t going to be good enough to pop.</p>
<p>So I went out and got a job. And that’s how I wound up at NCR.</p>
<p><em>[Note: Hurd spent 25 years at NCR, starting as an entry level salesperson and working his way up to CEO. He was hired away to become CEO of HP in 2005.]</em></p>
<p><strong>BI: What did you’re parents do in their careers?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH:</strong> My dad was in financial services.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Did you grow up wealthy? Middle-class? Struggling?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH:&nbsp;</strong>We did fine.</p>
<p><strong>BI: You continue to be a huge supporter of Baylor. I take it you loved college?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I got a great education. I had to learn a lot of structure. When you are a tennis player, you have to travel a lot. You are on the road some ridiculous number of days from tournament to tournament, so your ability to balance your studies is a major challenge.</p>
<p><strong>BI: What did you major in?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Marketing management. It’s what I wanted to do.</p>
<p><strong>BI: You figured out how to balance tennis and school I take it. Were your grades exceptional?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> They were good.</p>
<p><strong>BI: I've heard people call you a human calculator ...</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH:&nbsp;</strong>I like numbers.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you have a photographic memory?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I remember a lot of things. I’ve had to tell people, "Don’t tell me something you want me to forget." I usually get the question, "How do you remember that?" — well you told me!</p>
<p><strong>BI: Did you have any role models in your life?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> People ask me that a lot and I say, not really. You have to be your own person. There’s things people do that you can respect and emulate maybe to a degree. I have respect for a whole set of people. But the term role model, to me, implies that you will try to imitate to a degree and that’s not something I aspire to do.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Is there a fantastic immigration story in your family history about your parents or theirs?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> The last thing I’ll say about my family is that my mom was once or twice removed from this country and my dad’s family was here longer. I love my parents, I just don’t like putting them into the spotlight. I’m actually fairly private.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Tell me about your charity work, non-profit boards you’re on or other interests?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I’m on the board of Baylor and I can testify that it's a not-for-profit. When you are in these [executive] jobs, you don’t have a lot of time for other things. I do participate on the board and do everything I can to help the school.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Are there other particular charitable causes that you like to support? It sounds like education?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Obviously, I’ve got a love of education because what I’ve done with my university and given a lot to that. I believe in the mission of the school. Other things I do for charity I purposely don’t publicize.&nbsp;When you do these things you don’t do them for recognition.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Has Bill Gates come and talked to you about his Promise Pledge?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> No.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Morning person or night owl?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I get up at 4:30. I'm not as regular about the go-to-bed time as I am about the get-up time. If you ask me why that is, I can't explain that. I sort of have two speeds: fast and stop.</p>
<p><strong>BI: So: iPhone, Android or something else?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I’m an iPhone guy. I found I’m able to use something smaller and I can do most of what I can do now using a tablet, an iPhone and a tablet. Not having to lug a laptop around is frankly just a blessing. I do find it favorable that you can get an eco-system from the tablet to the PC and all of that promise.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you have a favorite, not-business-related app?</strong></p>
<p><strong><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54c2dbe4eab8eadd0e861f38-1200-924/mark-hurd-14.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd">MH: </strong> I’m a big sports fan. I’ve got everything from an ATP app [the Association of Tennis Professionals], ESPN app, college football app. If you got my iPhone it would be pretty boring.</p>
<p><strong>BI: I know you work a lot, but when you aren’t working are you playing tennis?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Yes, a bit.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Are there other sports that you love to play?</strong></p>
<p>MH: I’m not good at them anymore.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Who do you play tennis with?</strong><br>MH: People my age.</p>
<p>If I get on the court now with a guy who's 23 or 24, you realize just how strong you were. It’s a lot better for me ego-wise to get on the court with somebody who’s in their mid-40s on. If you play competitively and get some kind who’s 24 years old, it just isn’t how they hit the ball, it’s their ability to do it for a long time.</p>
<p>[<em>Note: Hurd is 58.]</em></p>
<p><strong>BI: You have a Twitter account, but you don’t tweet much. You do write the occasional column for LinkedIn. Are you into other social media? Facebook with your kids?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> My kids, I learn a lot from them with how they and their friends deal with social media. I’d say they are less into Facebook these days. They don’t send emails. When I say, "I’ll send you an email," they are like, "email?" They do a lot of Snapchatting.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you Snapchat with them … here I am, in Paris …?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I do not Snapchat with them but at some point I’m going to have to acquiesce. Their group are not big Facebook users, they've gone on from that. They are constantly changing. It’s amazing the speed by which they move to new apps.</p>
<p><strong>BI: You live in the same small Valley town as Meg Whitman, right? Do you know her, do you see her?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I know her, but no, in Atherton I don't see her.</p>
<p><strong>BI: So you know where I'm going with this ... do you have any thoughts about HP breaking up?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong>No, no I don't.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Is this going to be good for Oracle?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> I don't think it will matter.</p>
<p><strong><strong><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/541b43c269bedd2b292c5cae-1200-924/safra catz and mark hurd.jpg" border="0" alt="Safra Catz and Mark Hurd"></strong>BI: It seems like the shared CEO role is a really a job interview and that the board will ultimately choose one of you ...<br></strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Well listen, I’ve done this CEO job three times, I've done them alone and now I've done them with a partner. When you work with someone like Safra who is smart, knows the business, is a fierce competitor, is easy to work with, it is a hell of lot easier than doing these jobs alone. I love every minute. I see her all the time. Virtually every day.</p>
<p><strong>BI: When you were at HP, there were some fantastical stories about cost-cutting. Can you talk about your approach to spending, investing, cutting costs?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Always my thought is to put the company in the best competitive position that you possibly can. There’s a number of factors that go into it. What is the strategy of the company? Does the company have a clear strategy? Meaning I know what I’m trying to get done to better position it in the market relative to the competition and to better help customers.</p>
<p>Second, how do you get the operations of the company in the best position to execute strategy. So I've got a strategy. Then I've got to get operations to execute strategy. Then you've got to get operations in the best position to execute the strategy. And then you got to get the best people in place to execute operations.</p>
<p>So it's really all three, and the three have to work in unison to get a company going in the right direction.</p>
<p><strong><strong><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54c2dc4369bedd8e648a4b11-400-300/hp-patricia-dunn-mark-hurd-1.jpg" border="0" alt="HP Patricia Dunn Mark Hurd"></strong>BI: So when cost getting gets extreme, or when employees are starting to feel like cost cutting gets extreme ...?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> You’re never wanting to have a day when you have extraneous costs. Frankly, I think some of this is fable as much as anything, but when you have spending levels, whether it's in sales or R&amp;D, etc., people tend to equate more spending on R&amp;D with meaning you’re going to have more good products.</p>
<p>If I’m the first one to tell you this, count that as a good thing: That’s not true.</p>
<p>Anytime you have spends, your objective is make them as effective and efficient as you can.</p>
<p>So one of the things I’m proud about at Oracle, it isn’t just our R&amp;D spend (which, by the way is large), but our yield for it is incredible. The yield you get for what you spend, you have to look at both sides of the equation.</p>
<p><strong>BI: So that’s it. You were looking at the yields and felt "we’re still spending too much" even though employees were feeling the pinch …</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Employees are important. At the end of the day, employees will be much happier if the company is in a position to win. If the company isn’t in a position to win, in the long run you’ll never make anyone happy.</p>
<p><strong>BI: There are two sides to leadership, strategy (coming up with ideas) and execution (putting ideas into action). You are especially known for execution. What is it that people don’t understand about execution and typically do wrong?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Listen, it’s great to have ideas when you come up with a strategy. You can ask a question: Is the strategy worth working on? Is there a prize at the end worth working on? Many people make this mistake. They have a great idea but even if in the end, they executed perfectly, it's not worth the effort to have worked on it.</p>
<p>Second, you also have strategies, while very attractive, are not executable by the group that’s working on it. So when you say, "that's a great idea." But the talent or the market positioning is not executable by "me," me being the company with the idea.</p>
<p>There’s many filters that strategies have to go through. I’d actually argue that one of the things about execution is having a strategy that’s actually executable before lining up to go get it done.</p>
<p><strong><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54c2dd016bb3f7e5778045f5-1200-924/mark-hurd-speaking-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd speaking">MH: Do you have an example of something that sounds like a great idea but wasn’t the right fit for the people who had it?</strong></p>
<p>Let’s say a company that specializes in hardware wants to expand into software. The strategy may have sounded good at the outset, but the company may not have the assets in place to execute the transition. Having the right strategy is key, but it isn’t enough. You also need the right team in place to execute the strategy.</p>
<p><strong>BI: So you’re saying, that’s what people do wrong: They never ask the questions of which specific person will do which specific task?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Yes. I would say that [to execute any business plan well] you need to say: Here’s the strategy, here’s the results if we execute that strategy well and here’s the actual people that are going to go do it.</p>
<p>Then and only then should you go do it.</p>
<p><strong>BI: One of your first big projects when you got here was revamping the sales force, where you hired a bunch of sales people. That’s complete now, right?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Yes, for a while.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Some salespeople recently told me about something unique to Oracle, this concept of “jump balls." It’s when there are some customers that are up for grabs to any salesperson, and it leads to stealing of accounts and hard feelings among the team. What’s the strategy of having your own sales team compete amongst themselves like that?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Some of that pre-dates me. There was a concept when I got here of "un-deployed accounts" meaning that Mark, Julie, and Glenn had territories. And in the middle of table was a bunch of accounts that were in none of our territories. And if something came in from one of those accounts, some manager would make a determination whether Mark, Julie, or Glenn would work on it or get credit for it.</p>
<p>That’s not a good process. The reality is, what we do now is to make sure that those accounts are fully distributed.</p>
<p><strong>BI: What other changes did you make to territories?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> You brought up one case, where the account wasn't distributed. In many a case, the accounts were over-distributed.</p>
<p>Historically, if Mark, Julie, or Glenn had territories, we each had lots and lots of accounts in our territories. Let's say we each had 100 accounts in our territories. We're all very good, very talented people. We could probably handle four or five accounts a year.</p>
<p>So the natural question, what do you do with the other 95 accounts? "Well, I have no idea, explain it to me." The reality is, most of those accounts lay dormant.</p>
<p>So when you look towards expansion, much of our work was not to redistribute the accounts that weren't distributed but to resize our territories into a manageable set of accounts per territory.</p>
<p><strong>BI: You’ve publicly acknowledged that Oracle isn’t always easy for customers to do business with and you want to change that. What are doing there?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> A couple of things. We’ve had tremendous yield out of our R&amp;D. We also acquire companies. The good news is we get a ton of new products through R&amp;D and acquisitions.</p>
<p>My number one issue with customers is this statement, “I didn’t know you did that. I didn’t know you had that.” So there’s an awareness issue on the part of our customers to things we’ve acquired or things we released.</p>
<p>It’s a good news issue, but also a bad news issue of making sure our customers are fully aware or our portfolio.</p>
<p>We believe very much in the specialization of our salesforce, meaning if you are an Oracle salesperson you know your product, you know your competitor and you know your customer.</p>
<p>To a degree, when you wind up as a specialist, for instance a specialist selling to HR, to the CFO, selling to the head of sales, in many cases our customer won’t feel all of that is coordinated as well as it needs to be [to give them] a holistic multi-year plan with Oracle.</p>
<p><strong>BI: What about enterprise software contracts with <a href="http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/oracles-licensing-rules-five-common-pitfalls-to-watch-out-for/">draconian terms intended to trap customers</a> into paying more for software?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> When you hear draconian deals, almost all of the time, that centers around [the fact that] Oracle acquires a lot of companies and often we have to renegotiate contracts with customers of those companies to bring them in line with our standards. We’re working on making those experiences better for our customers.</p>
<p><strong><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/52eff6d66da811a1283e1f5e-909-681/meg-whitman-47.jpg" border="0" alt="Meg Whitman">BI: Given all the turmoil going on in the enterprise tech industry, do you think the world understands Oracle's strategy?</strong></p>
<p><strong>MH: </strong> Since I came here the stock has more than doubled. More times than not, you transform [a company] and then you get a pop. We’ve been able to double the company’s market cap while transforming.</p>
<p><em>[Note: the stock was trading around $23 in September 2010 and is now hovering near $45, hitting a 10-year high of about $46 in December].</em></p>
<p>I think our market position is strong. If you ask me, would we want to change places with SAP or IBM? No.</p>
<p>Let me say that again. No.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-mind-of-oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-2015-1" >A Rare Glimpse Inside The Life And Mind Of Oracle CEO Mark Hurd</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-full-interview-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-mind-of-oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-2015-1A Rare Glimpse Inside The Life And Mind Of Oracle CEO Mark Hurd (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-mind-of-oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-2015-1
Sun, 25 Jan 2015 10:55:00 -0500Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5429fde76da811842e951a37-1200-924/oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd.jpg" border="0" alt="Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd"></p><p>"My day starts at 4:30 a.m. and I sort of have two speeds, fast and stop," Mark Hurd quipped cheerfully when we asked about his day.</p>
<p>We were meeting at Oracle's upscale executive offices on the top floor of the main building at its Redwood City, California, headquarters, accompanied by two members of his personal PR team and Oracle's chief marketing officer, Judith Sim. They weren't there as handlers. Hurd was in full control of the conversation, his answers, what he was and wasn't willing to say.</p>
<p>We were there to talk about the journey that landed him in the unprecedented role of the second-ish CEO of Oracle, a job he's sharing with Oracle's longtime finance whiz Safra Catz. (Both of them have the official title of "CEO," not "co-CEO," we were told.)</p>
<p>Hurd is one of the more interesting characters in the high-tech world of celebrity CEOs.</p>
<p>He is closed and private, while also being open, gregarious, opinionated, and always willing to crack a joke, all in a thick East Coast accident ("I grew up in New York City and I moved to Florida in high school." Miami.).</p>
<p>For instance, he won't talk much about stuff other CEOs are normally happy to share, like his parents' professions or his philanthropic interests.</p>
<p>But he did tell us:</p>
<ul>
<li>He grew up the son of a well-to-do father that worked in the financial services industry.</li>
<li>He's been married to his wife, Paula, for "going on 25 years," and they have two daughters, one in college and the other in her late teens. When asked for details about his family, he riffed on the joys of married life (making the room laugh) but expertly sidestepped my questions. Upshot: "They’re great kids and their dad loves them a lot. I have a wife who’s a great mom." </li>
<li>As a wealthy CEO, he does give to charity, but he if he has a foundation or a formal giving arrangement, he won't talk about it. He will discuss his support of his alma mater, Baylor University, which he attended on a tennis scholarship. He's on the board of regents for Baylor and has given so generously to the tennis program that <a href="https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&amp;story=124780">they named the tennis center after him</a>.</li>
<li>Has Bill Gates ever talked to him about joining his Giving Pledge, to give away most of his wealth to charity? "No." (Note: Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/larry-ellison/">world's fifth richest man</a>, also didn't like to talk about his charitable contributions, but Gates' friend and Pledge partner Warren Buffet <a href="http://givingpledge.org/images/pledgers/letters/Ellisoninfo-Letter-1.jpg">did eventually convince Ellison to sign the Pledge.</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p>(You can read a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-full-interview-2015-1">full transcript of our interview here</a>.)</p>
<h3>A "Jump Ball"?</h3>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54c29ed269beddbf748a4b14-1200-924/oracle-mark-hurd-and-safra-catz.jpg" border="0" alt="Oracle Mark Hurd and Safra Catz">Hurd became the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company for the third time in his life in September, when Oracle's founder Larry Ellison announced news that no one was expecting to hear – ever.</p>
<p>After 37 years, Ellison stepped down as CEO, promoting his existing right-hand man and woman, Hurd and Catz, who had already been job-sharing the No. 2 role of president.</p>
<p>Ellison became CTO, leading product development (which has always been his favorite focus), and remained their boss by becoming executive chairman of the board.</p>
<p>Shared CEO structures are rare and, typically, temporary. Sooner or later, one of them moves on and the other rules alone. For that reason, industry insiders see this as a giant job interview between Hurd and Catz for the day when Ellison really leaves the company.</p>
<p>Call it a "jump ball."</p>
<p>In fact, Ellison is famously fond of competition. Among Oracle's massive sales organization, the basketball term "jump ball" describes a situation where two or more salespeople compete for the same sale with the same customer. The idea is to squeeze out competitors by having your own hungry salesforce blanket the market.</p>
<p>The "jump ball" is "not a good process," Hurd told us, and he officially got rid of it as he revamped Oracle's sales force over the last two years. (Although we understand from some salespeople we talked to a few months ago that jump balls still happen on occasion.)</p>
<p>As for a jump ball <span>between himself and Catz </span>for the sole CEO job, Hurd says he's not focusing on that but is all about "moving the company forward."</p>
<p>And he's got nothing but praise for Catz.</p>
<p>"I've done this CEO job three times, I’ve done them alone and now I’ve done them with a partner," he says. "When you work with someone like Safra who is smart, knows the business, is a fierce competitor, is easy to work with, it's a hell of lot easier than doing these jobs alone. I love every minute. I see her all the time. Virtually every day."</p>
<p>Jump ball or not, the Oracle co-CEO job is a crowning moment for Hurd in a career filled with epic, and very public, ups and downs.</p>
<p>It's especially sweet given the controversial way he arrived at Oracle.</p>
<h3>From Tennis Pro To CEO</h3>
<p>Hurd's first reign as CEO began in 2003 at computer-equipment and consulting company NCR.</p>
<p>He joined NCR in 1980 as an entry-level salesperson straight from college, after he tried his hand at his dream job: being a professional tennis player.</p>
<p>He had attended Baylor University on a tennis scholarship and gave himself a couple of tournaments after college to chase his dream.</p>
<p>"I wasn’t good enough," he told us. "I got of out of college and I was beating really good guys but not good enough to be a [Roger] Federer, to be the best."</p>
<p>It wasn't just the idea of not being the best that stopped him. He also loved business — he studied marketing in school — and he worried that if he spent years playing tennis without striking it big, he would be risking his chance at a great career.</p>
<p>"It’s tough to reenter the work force," he told us. "So I went out and got a job. And that’s how I wound up at NCR."</p>
<p>It turned out to be a good choice. He spent 25 years at NCR, working his way up to CEO, leaving only when Hewlett-Packard came calling. Hewlett-Packard recruited him to replace Carly Fiorina, the CEO it had just fired.</p>
<p>Hurd was (and still is) known for his "execution" leadership skills, particularly reining in costs.</p>
<p>He's been called a human calculator with a near-photographic memory. ("I like numbers," he says when asked about this stuff. "I remember a lot of things. I’ve had to tell people, ‘Don’t tell me something you want me to forget.’ I usually get the question, ‘How do you remember that?’ — well you told me!")</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54c29ff5eab8eaea1a861f37-778-337/header-hurdtenniscenter.jpg" border="0" alt="Baylor Hurd Tennis Center" width="800"></p>
<h3>Larry Ellison Scoops Him Up</h3>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Hurd led HP for five years after Carly Fiorina's reign. He was at first praised for cleaning up the company's financials. But then he was criticized for cost-cutting actions that some felt were too heavy-handed. (We've heard stories of employees being told to work at home, and pay for their own internet and phone.)</span></p>
<p>He was forced to resign in 2010 over a scandal accusing him of sexual harassment with an HP contractor. HP's board investigated the claim and concluded no sexual harassment took place, and the woman making the accusations later recanted some of them. But HP's board said that they did find issues with his expense account. He <a href="http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=588867&amp;pageTitle#.VMGF_3bEjR0">publicly apologized for</a> "instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity" and left with a $40 million severance package.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54c2a318eab8eac026861f37-1200-924/mark-hurd-13.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd"></p>
<p>HP and Oracle had been close business partners. HP sold a lot of expensive computer servers designed to run Oracle's software. Mark Hurd and Larry Ellison knew each other and became friends.</p>
<p>Ellison not only scooped him up after he left HP, but publicly defended him, too.</p>
<p>In an email to The New York Times, Ellison said, "The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." (Steve Jobs was Ellison's next-door neighbor and friend, too, by the way.)</p>
<p>Ellison had just completed the acquisition of hardware company Sun Microsystems, and <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/044428">was set to start competing with HP.</a> The software business and hardware businesses are two very different beasts and Oracle didn't have the expertise in-house to run Sun.</p>
<p>Hurd did. It was still a bumpy ride to integrate Sun. Ellison's game plan wasn't to become another HP. He simply wanted to stop having to depend on HP or IBM to build systems to run his software. Ellison wanted to create his own machines specially tuned to make Oracle's software, particularly its flagship database, run faster and do more.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54c2a33e6da811c50a9c7d56-509-382/larry-ellison-mark-hurd.jpg" border="0" alt="larry ellison mark hurd">HP turned around and hired Leo Apotheker as its next CEO. He had just been sent packing from Oracle's long-time archenemy, SAP.</p>
<p>When Oracle hired Hurd, HP sued over that, and over Oracle's decision to stop selling a version of its software that would run on HP's high-end servers. The lawsuit led to the disclosure of some <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-mark-hurd-sun-hardware-quote-we-bought-a-dog-2012-5">interesting and sometimes embarrassing emails</a> from Oracle employees who didn't seem very excited to sell Sun's products.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-wins-its-lawsuit-against-oracle-2012-8">HP won the server lawsuit</a> and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-resolves-lawsuit-against-oracle-over-mark-hurd-2010-9">the two settled over hiring Hurd</a>, with Hurd agreeing to give back<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-resolves-lawsuit-against-oracle-over-mark-hurd-2010-9"> some of the HP stock options included in his $40 million severance package</a>.</p>
<p>And Oracle has since released a whole bunch of special servers that it says are selling well.</p>
<h3>The "Fabled" Cost-Cutter</h3>
<p>Hurd had no comment to our questions about HP. He and current HP CEO Meg Whitman are neighbors, both living in the affluent Silicon Valley town of Atherton. But Hurd doesn't see her around town and has no opinion to share on whether or not he likes her.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/532731906da811941ad9dac5-1170-877/mark-hurd-8.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd">There is one area of his time at HP that he openly discussed: his reputation for excessive cost-cutting — "fable as much as anything," he told us.</p>
<p>HP simply wasn't getting enough return for the money it spent, he explained.</p>
<p>"You’re never wanting to have a day when you have extraneous costs," he said. "Frankly, I think some of this is fable as much as anything, but when you have spending levels whether it's in sales or R&amp;D, etc., people tend to equate more spending on R&amp;D means you’re going to have more good products ... That’s not true."</p>
<p>"Anytime you have spends, your objective is make them as effective and efficient as you can. One of the things I’m proud about at Oracle, it isn’t just our R&amp;D spend (which, by the way is large), but our yield for it is incredible. You have to look at both sides of the equation."</p>
<p>At Oracle, revenue growth is the big goal. He's been telling employees to spend what they need to get it.</p>
<p>During his first few months at Oracle he asked every one of his direct reports for a three-year plan. He then said, “Make that three-year plan a one-year plan." And he told them: "We are going to invest, but we are not changing our revenue goals. If you tell me something will grow the top line, you have unfettered access to the checkbook.’’</p>
<p>Last year, just before the holidays, Hurd met with a sales group and asked the sales manager (several layers of management from him) what she needed most. Her response: "More reps.” Hurd shocked her when he agreed to hire them on the spot.</p>
<h3>A Kinder Oracle? Not Quite</h3>
<p>As for his plans for Oracle, next up is to <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2496525/enterprise-applications/oracle-wants-to-be-easier-to-work-with--mark-hurd-says.html">change the company's reputation for being hard to work with</a>.</p>
<p>"We’ve had tremendous yield out of our R&amp;D. We also acquire companies. The good news is we get a ton of new products through R&amp;D and acquisitions," he said.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/54c2a826eab8eab039861f37-1200-924/mark-hurd-oracle-11.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd Oracle" style="color: #222222; line-height: 22.5px;"></p>
<p>The bad news? </p>
<p>"My number-one issue with customers is this statement: 'I didn’t know you did that. I didn’t know you had that.'"</p>
<p>Hurd also hired <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">more than 4,000 salespeople and turned them into product "specialists" on particular products, restructured quotas to boost hardware sales, and changed territories. It was a tough transition for some salespeople — </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9">some complained while others left, sources told us.</a></p>
<p>Now Hurd has to figure out how to tell customers about this tide of new Oracle products without subjecting them to a constant wave of sales calls from different salespeople.</p>
<p>"To a degree, when you wind up as a specialist (for instance a specialist selling to HR, to the CFO, selling to the head of sales), in many cases our customer won’t feel all of that is coordinated as well as it needs to, [to] get a holistic multiyear plan with Oracle," he told us.</p>
<p>Oracle says that it's making progress on that front, citing improvements on internal customer satisfaction surveys that it wouldn't share with us. (The company did point us to <a href="http://www.ioug.org/p/bl/et/blogid=40&amp;blogaid=486">a glowing column recently written by a CIO</a> who is head of the Independent Oracle Users Group).</p>
<p>But that doesn't mean Oracle is going to become some kind of kinder, gentler Kumbaya company.</p>
<p>The most famous anecdote about Hurd in the halls of Oracle is this one: He was speaking to his sales team and pacing the room, as he often does when he speaks. And he<span> stepped on a power cord taped to the floor. </span></p>
<p><span>He stopped, looked down and said, “You see this cord? This is the oxygen flowing to our competitors. I want you to step on this cord and stop the flow of oxygen.’’</span></p>
<h3><strong>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mind-exercises-focus-better-stress-2015-1">How To Take Control Of Your Mind And Focus Better</a></strong></h3>
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<p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-full-interview-2015-1" >We Had A Surprisingly Fun Conversation With Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. This Is What He Told Us</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-mind-of-oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-2015-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/shareholders-not-happy-oracle-ceo-pay-2014-9A Bunch Of High-Powered Shareholders Are Not Happy With Oracle's New Co-CEO Pay (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/shareholders-not-happy-oracle-ceo-pay-2014-9
Tue, 30 Sep 2014 14:29:00 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/542af587ecad043e29c1759d-800-/larry-ellison-108.jpg" alt="larry ellison" width="800" border="0"></p><p></p>
<p>Five bigwig institutional shareholders want to force Oracle to make radical changes to the way it pays it top three executives: executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison and co-CEOs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd.</p>
<p>They are concerned that Oracle's board of directors isn't independent enough from management and "insufficient board accountability and poorly designed compensation programs create significant risks for shareholders."</p>
<p>Of Oracle's 11 directors, three of them still earn their living at Oracle (Ellison, Catz, and Hurd), and one of them is the company's former CFO and chairman.</p>
<p>"We equate the recent announcement on changes to Oracle’s leadership structure as simply a rearrangement of the deck chairs which serves to further empower executive management," according to a letter sent to shareholders. "The CEO has stepped down — in title only — to become an Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer. ... It is clear who remains in charge of the Board and why independent director representation is needed more than ever at Oracle."</p>
<p>The shareholders behind this proposal are California State Teachers’ Retirement System; The Nathan Cummings Foundation (the charitable foundation formed by Sara Lee founder Nathan Cummings); PGGM Investments, a Dutch pension fund service provider that manages EUR 178 billion; the RPMI Railpen Investments, a UK pension fund service provider; and the retirement fund for U.S. autoworkers, UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust.</p>
<p>They want to be able to elect independent board members from the shareholders at large.</p>
<p>This is not an attempt for activist shareholders to take over the board and the company, they say, because their proposal requires the new board member to have owned 3% of the company for at least three years.</p>
<p>These types of shareholder proposals almost never pass if the standing board of directors don't get behind them. And in Oracle's case, a shareholder uprising is next to impossible, since Larry Ellison holds a 26% stake of the company.</p>
<p>But given the names involved, this proposal and letter will almost certainly get Oracle's attention, and maybe get the board to agree to these terms without an uprising. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-pay-cut-shares-reduced-2014-7">Oracle did actually agree to changes</a> in how it pays these execs the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/is-larry-ellison-worth-over-78-million-a-year-investor-demands-a-pay-cut-2013-9">last time shareholders rattled their sabres</a> about it. It <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-oracle-will-pay-its-new-ceos-2014-9">reduced the number of shares granted as stock options</a>&nbsp;and made some of them into "performance stock units" earned as bonuses.</p>
<p>Even so, these three executives remains some of the highest paid in the land.</p>
<p>We've reached out to two of the organizations that signed the letter and will update when we hear back. Oracle declined comment. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1081019/000095015914000441/px14a6g.htm">Here's the full letter:</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Dear Oracle Shareholder:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We write to you as long-term shareholders in Oracle Corporation and as co-sponsors of the proxy access proposal that your fund will be asked to vote on at the upcoming annual meeting of Oracle Corporation on November 5, 2014.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We urge you to vote FOR Proposal No. 7.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We believe the case for proxy access is particularly compelling at Oracle Corporation, where insufficient board accountability and poorly designed compensation programs create significant risks for shareholders.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We equate the recent announcement on changes to Oracle’s leadership structure as simply a rearrangement of the deck chairs which serves to further empower executive management. The CEO has stepped down - in title only - to become an Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer. In his place the Company appointed two CEOs from the executive suite to serve coextensively - an unsustainable model that further consolidates the former CEO's control. It is clear who remains in charge of the Board and why independent director representation is needed more than ever at Oracle.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">BOARD GOVERNANCE CONCERNS</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Independent Directors Needed. We have long held concerns as to whose interests the Board of Oracle is serving and proxy access will allow long-term shareholders a mechanism to nominate independent candidates who can better represent broader shareholder interests and instil a culture of accountability.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Captive Board of Directors. All three Compensation Committee members received withhold votes of 60% or more from non-insider shareholders at Oracle’s 2013 annual meeting. Given the number of shares held by Mr. Ellison, the Compensation Committee has, in effect, been elected only because Mr. Ellison presumably cast his vote in support of their re-elections. We believe Board members are being insulated from the preferences of non-insider shareholders.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Unresponsive Board. The failed say-on-pay votes at two consecutive meetings should have resulted in measurable changes to Oracle’s compensation quantum and structure, but in our view, the structure remains largely the same. The lack of response from the Board to these votes raises broader concerns around board governance and accountability to non-insider shareholders.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">PROXY ACCESS</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Our proposal provides a reasonable mechanism to nominate director candidates, including an ownership requirement of 3% for 3 years. Director candidates would be elected upon approval from a majority of all shareholders, thus access could not be used by a shareholder seeking to obtain control of the Board. We believe that the need for proxy access is clearly evident at Oracle Corporation given the significant risks to shareholders from insufficient board accountability and poorly designed compensation programs.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We therefore urge you to vote FOR our resolution to give shareholders access to the proxy and the ability to improve board accountability at Oracle Corporation.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">This is NOT a solicitation of authority to vote your proxy. Please DO NOT SEND us your proxy card but return it to the proxy-voting agent in the envelope that was or will be provided to you by the Company. The Nathan Cummings Foundation, CalSTRS, PGGM, RPMI Railpen, and UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust are not able to vote your proxies, and this communication does not contemplate such an event. This communication is meant to inform you about The Nathan Cummings Foundation’s, CalSTRS’, PGGM’s, RPMI Railpen’s, and UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust’s opinion and to give you valuable decision-making information when you review your shareholder proxy for the 2014 annual shareholders’ meeting of Oracle Corporation.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Sincerely,</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Anne Sheehan<br>Director of Corporate Governance<br>California State Teachers’ Retirement System</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">William Dempsey<br>Chief Financial Officer<br>The Nathan Cummings Foundation</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Catherine Jackson<br>Senior Advisor, Responsible Investment<br>PGGM Investments</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Deborah Gilshan<br>Corporate Governance Counsel<br>RPMI Railpen Investments</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Meredith Miller<br>Chief Corporate Governance Officer<br>UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shareholders-not-happy-oracle-ceo-pay-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-why-oracle-has-two-ceos-2014-9Mark Hurd Explains Why Oracle Needs Two CEOs (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-why-oracle-has-two-ceos-2014-9
Mon, 29 Sep 2014 21:05:03 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5429fde76da811842e951a37-1200-924/oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd.jpg" border="0" alt="Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd"></p><p>The tech world is still stunned that after 37 years, Larry Ellison is no longer CEO of the company he founded, Oracle, even though his&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ellison-down-2-billion-2014-9">change in job title is largely symbolic. </a></p>
<p>His top two executives, formerly known as presidents, are now co-CEOs, while Ellison has become executive chairman and CTO. The trio has insisted that this change in titles will pretty much not affect anything. All of them will keep doing the jobs they were already doing. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ellison-down-2-billion-2014-9">Co-CEO Safra Catz even said point blank, </a>"There will actually be no changes, no significant changes."</p>
<p>But at a press conference on Monday during Oracle's big customer conference happening this week in San Francisco, Mark Hurd offered a better explanation.</p>
<p>When a journalist asked why Oracle needed two CEOs to replace Larry Ellison, Hurd explained, "We're a big company. This is bigger than the salesforce. It's bigger than Safra and me. Bigger than Larry, Safra and me. ... It's the development team, other teams. We have over 130,000 people. We need a lot of leadership in our company."</p>
<p>We can't help but wonder if the co-CEO plan is really a years-long job interview between Catz and Hurd. Ellison is 70, and though he shows no signs of slowing down or retiring, this is a first step in a succession plan. When that retirement day comes (when he's 75? 80?), perhaps one of them may have emerged as the ultimate single CEO.</p>
<p>That would be a very Ellison-like way of finding his replacement. Ellison says that the thing that keeps him going and motivated is competition.</p>
<p>"What drives me is this constant testing of limits," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/11-things-larry-ellison-taught-the-world-2014-4">he told attendees at a customer conference, earlier this year.</a> "I'm addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win."</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-why-oracle-has-two-ceos-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/a-closer-look-at-oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd-2014-9Meet Oracle's New Co-CEO, Mark Hurd (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/a-closer-look-at-oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd-2014-9
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:45:00 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/541b66e769bedda84a2c5cac-850-637/mark-hurd.png" alt="Mark Hurd" border="0"></p><p>Mark Hurd has&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">been promoted to co-CEO of Oracle, now that Larry Ellison is ending his 37-year-long CEO reign.</span></p>
<p>This is Hurd's' third time at the top of the org chart. He was previously CEO of NCR Corp. after a 25-year career there. Then he spent five years as CEO of HP, from 2005 - 2010, a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-sex-letter-that-got-mark-hurd-fired-as-ceo-of-hp-2011-12">stint that ended in a scandal and Hurd's resignation.</a></p>
<p>Hurd was asked to resign after he was accused of inappropriately submitting corporate expense reports over a relationship with a female contractor. He left with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-ceo-mark-hurd-gets-50-million-severance-for-sex-scandal-that-cost-hp-shareholders-10-billion-2010-8">a severance package worth $50 million. </a></p>
<p>At the time, Ellison famously came to Hurd's defense writing an e-mail <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/technology/10hewlett.html">to the New York Times denouncing HP's decision:</a></p>
<p>"The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago,” Ellison wrote.</p>
<p>Ellison was not at all concerned about Hurd's private life or expense reports. Ellison admired Hurd as a businessman.</p>
<p>And Hurd definitely has game. He's known to have a brilliant mind for figures, like a human spreadsheet, able to calculate columns of numbers in his head.</p>
<p>Still, his tenure at HP was rocky for other reasons. Hurd is known as a cost-management guy, which was good for HP at first. The company's revenues and profits grew significantly when he was at the helm, helped by $24.3 billion in acquisitions.</p>
<p>But Hurd's cost-cutting grew extreme, and according to some HP employees, it eventually hurt the company.</p>
<p>When Hurd left HP he had only 34% CEO approval rating from his employees, <a href="http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Hewlett-Packard-RVW285636.htm">Glassdoor reports. </a></p>
<p>As a Hewlett-Packard Software Engineer (Houston, TX) noted at the time, “You need to replace the CEO with someone who have a vision for growth for our company not someone who only cuts costs.”</p>
<p>Hurd's signature deal at HP was the $13.2 billion acquisition of EDS in 2008, which never really flourished. A couple of years after he left, HP CEO Meg Whitman wrote off $8 billion of that acquisition.</p>
<p>His work at Oracle hasn't been without controversy, either. Ellison loves him for his ability to manage Oracle's huge sprawling businesses, sources have told us. But Hurd also immediately set about overhauling Oracle's legendary sales force, hiring 4,000 more salespeople, restructuring quotas to boost hardware sales, and changing territories. It was a rocky transition, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9">some Oracle salespeople complained, while others left, they told us.</a></p>
<p>The proof of this plan was supposed to be in the pudding. After a couple of stagnant quarters, Oracle did return to growth, though it is still missing Wall Street's expectations more than it is meeting them.</p>
<p>Not all of that can be laid at Hurd and the sales force's feet. Oracle, like its competitors, is going through the transition from selling software to offering cloud-computing services, and these kinds of changes take time and affect revenues in the short term.</p>
<p>The Oracle CEO role will be different for Hurd because he's sharing it with Oracle's former <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-new-co-ceo-is-safra-catz-2014-9">CFO Safra Catz</a>. It's really just a change in title, though, not a change in responsibility.</p>
<p>As Oracle's president, Hurd was already handling all sales, service, and industry-specific business units, and he still will. Catz was previously running all manufacturing, finance, and legal functions and still will. As CTO, Ellison will still run all software and hardware engineering functions.</p>
<p>In fact, Ellison even said he's still going to attend the quarterly analyst conference calls, same as always, drawing a laugh from the Wall Street analysts on the call.</p>
<p>"Mark and Safra have worked closely with Larry for a long time, doing a lot of executive duties anyhow," Bill Kreher, technology analyst for Edward Jones, told Business Insider. "This is Larry’s way of giving them proper recognition for all the work they’ve done and letting them know they've got long-term job security. He's not out looking for the next CEO outside of Oracle. It's clearly something he's thought a lot about."</p>
<p>In terms of Hurd's personal interests, he is passionate about tennis. He attended Baylor University on a tennis scholarship and is a big supporter of the university and its tennis program. After a big donation from Hurd, Baylor named its revamped tennis complex in his honor.</p>
<p>He and his wife live in one of the Valley's most prestigious neighborhoods, Atherton, California. His neighbors include Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Google’s Eric Schmidt, and, ironically enough, current HP CEO Meg Whitman.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/whatever-happened-to-oracles-founders-in-this-iconic-photo-2012-8" >WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Look What Happened To The Cofounders Of Oracle</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-closer-look-at-oracle-co-ceo-mark-hurd-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/r-hp-wins-dismissal-of-lawsuit-linked-to-ex-ceo-hurds-ouster-2014-26Yet Another Lawsuit Against HP Over Mark Hurd Has Been Dismissed (HPQ)http://www.businessinsider.com/r-hp-wins-dismissal-of-lawsuit-linked-to-ex-ceo-hurds-ouster-2014-26
Fri, 27 Jun 2014 11:27:00 -0400Jonathan Stempel
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/526aaf2aeab8ea657999f6f7-621-465/mark-hurd-oracle-2.png" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd Oracle" /></p><p>Hewlett-Packard has won the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing the computer maker of securities fraud for misleading shareholders about its commitment to ethics while its chief executive was allegedly engaging in sexual harassment.</p>
<p>In August 2013, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco had thrown out an earlier version of the lawsuit, and on Wednesday dismissed a revised version that he said failed to address his concerns. Wednesday's dismissal was with prejudice, meaning the lawsuit cannot be brought again.</p>
<p>Before the case arose, HP had updated its Standards of Business Conduct following a 2006 scandal over news leaks.</p>
<p>The lawsuit stemmed from the sudden August 2010 departure of Chief Executive Mark Hurd amid allegations that he had harassed an independent consultant, Jodie Fisher. Hurd, who is now president of Oracle Corp, had won wide credit at HP for improving the company's fortunes.</p>
<p>An internal HP probe ultimately cleared Hurd of harassment but found that he filed inaccurate expense reports.</p>
<p>Plaintiffs led by the Retail Wholesale &amp; Department Store Union Local 338 Retirement Fund of Mineola, New York claimed that HP's share price was inflated during the period of Hurd's alleged misconduct.</p>
<p>They said the Palo Alto, California-based company's statements about its business conduct standards led them to believe Hurd was in compliance.</p>
<p>Last August, Tigar called HP's statements too vague and general to justify liability, but gave the plaintiffs another chance to make their case.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, he said the new complaint offered more detail about Hurd's conduct and whether it violated HP's rules, but still did not show that Hurd's or HP's representations amounted to a "warranty of ethical compliance" with the SBC.</p>
<p>"Accordingly," Tigar wrote, "plaintiff has not stated a securities law violation." He also said Hurd's failure to disclose his non-compliance with the SBC was not a "materially false" omission.</p>
<p>Ira Press, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment. HP did not immediately respond to similar requests. Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined to comment.</p>
<p>The case is Retail Wholesale &amp; Department Store Union Local 338 Retirement Fund v. Hewlett-Packard Co et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 12-04115.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-hp-wins-dismissal-of-lawsuit-linked-to-ex-ceo-hurds-ouster-2014-26#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/benioff-on-mark-hurds-biggest-mistake-2014-1Marc Benioff: This Is 'The Biggest Mistake' Oracle's Mark Hurd 'Ever Made' (ORCL, CRM)http://www.businessinsider.com/benioff-on-mark-hurds-biggest-mistake-2014-1
Thu, 09 Jan 2014 13:53:13 -0500Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/528aa7d56da811f0038b456f-480-/marc-benioff-14.jpg" border="0" alt="Marc Benioff" width="480" /></p><p>Even though<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-salesforce-will-pay-oracle-2013-6"> Salesforce.com signed a huge contract last summer</a> to keep using Oracle's products, and there was a public kiss-and-make-up session between Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and his mentor, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the two companies are still big rivals.</p>
<p>That was never more clear than in the remarks Benioff made to a group of reporters Wednesday evening, following a one-day Salesforce.com roadshow event in New York.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Benioff set a 2013 goal for himself of closing more deals with large enterprise companies, reports </span><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/benioff-oracles-big-mistake-is-salesforces-gain/d/d-id/1113374">InformationWeek's Doug Henschen</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. He wanted to hire Oracle's top sales guy, Keith Block, and had tried to recruit him for 10 years, Benioff said.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"But I couldn't get him until [Oracle president] Mark Hurd relieved him of his duties ... I think the biggest mistake Mark Hurd ever made was letting Keith Block leave Oracle, because he's probably the best sales executives the enterprise software industry has ever seen."</p>
<p>Block actually didn't join Salesforce until he had been gone from Oracle for about a year. Sources close to Oracle tell us that Hurd wasn't the only one involved in the decision to let him go.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-is-about-to-show-one-of-its-top-execs-the-door-2012-6"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4fdf75b76bb3f7c77a000015-400-300/keith-block.jpg" border="0" alt="Keith Block" width="300" />Block left Oracle after a controversial bunch of instant messages and e-mails</a> from him surfaced during a lawsuit between Oracle and HP.</p>
<p>In the messages, Block bashed Sun hardware, saying things like "We bought a dog. Mark wants us to sell the dog. ... Nobody wants to sell Sun." In another exchange, he <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracle-execs-ims-create-stir-shares-slide-2012-06-18">bashed Hurd for creating "lots of noise, not much results."</a>, according to MarketWatch.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Oracle <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9">has been struggling to find growth under Hurd's plans to revamp</a>. Also,&nbsp;Salesforce.com has gotten tight with HP.</p>
<p>HP has become a big Salesforce.com customer and, more recently, a partner. The two have jointly created <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/salesforcecom-hp-superpod-2013-11">a project called the Superpod</a>, in which large global companies can use Salesforce.com's cloud on HP hardware in a private area of Salesforce's data center.</p>
<p>Oracle declined to comment.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/best-22-tech-companies-to-work-for-2013-12" >The 22 Best Tech Companies To Work For, According To Employees</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/benioff-on-mark-hurds-biggest-mistake-2014-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-says-oracle-salesforce-wont-be-reorganized-2013-12Revenue Increase Helps Mark Hurd Tamp Down Questions About Oracle's Salesforce (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-says-oracle-salesforce-wont-be-reorganized-2013-12
Thu, 19 Dec 2013 09:03:00 -0500Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52b2436369bedda9223e69e4-480-/mark-hurd-oracle-6.png" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd Oracle" width="480" /></p><p>On Wednesday, Oracle president Mark Hurd got a couple of questions from Wall Street analysts about the state of Oracle's salesforce.</p>
<p>During <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/1906251-oracles-ceo-discusses-f2q-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single">the company's quarterly conference call</a>, he categorically denied that another reorganization was taking place.</p>
<p>"We don't have any salespeople changing territory, changing accounts. We're not reorg-ing anything. If anything, we're actually really happy with the model we're in," he said.</p>
<p>And he had the numbers behind him: On Wednesday, Oracle had <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/live-oracle-reports-earnings-2013-12">its first beat-the-street quarter, after three whiffs in a row</a>. That's a hopeful sign.</p>
<p>Changes to Oracle's North American sales force and/or its hardware <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-reorgs-makes-nice-with-hp-2013-12">unit were rumored to be quietly under way, </a>Wall Street analyst Pat Walravens, director of technology research for JMP Securities told Business Insider earlier this week.</p>
<p>It's all part of a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-reorgs-makes-nice-with-hp-2013-12">never-ending stream of stories from current and former salespeople</a> complaining that Hurd's sales plan isn't working. (Oracle has a massive, thousands-strong salesforce, so it's not particularly surprising that some of them are grumblers.) About two years ago, Hurd began restructuring Oracle's legendary sales force, hiring thousands more sales people, shrinking territories and asking salespeople to specialize in particular products.</p>
<p>As Oracle CEO Larry Ellison described it on Wednesday's call:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Mark has emphasized that we haven't made any changes and that's absolutely true. A while ago though, we decided we had to line up an HCM [Human Capital Management software] sales force directly against Workday. That's all they think about every day. We have another [team] that competes against Salesforce.com ... another team that focuses on SAP. "</p>
<p>Oracle is no longer hiring, Hurd said on Wednesday, and its sales team is fully staffed.</p>
<p>Revenue was up 2% from the year-ago quarter, to $9.28 billion. That's healthy but not stunning: All of it was from software license renewal contracts and product support contracts (which covers things like tech support). That revenue came from existing customers, not new software, cloud or hardware sales.</p>
<p>On the analyst call, CFO Safra Catz was asked if Oracle was going to continue to remain one of the most profitable tech companies ever. She said that depends on the sales force:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"What you can see in our numbers right now, year over year, the difference is that we've invested in sales capacity right now compared to last year, and we expect that to pay off."</p>
<p>Josh Olson, technology analyst for Edward Jones, told Business Insider that Oracle has about two more quarters to show that Hurd's overhaul is working.</p>
<p>"Oracle is right on cusp of a potential breakthrough, but keeps kind of teasing us," Olson said. "We&rsquo;ve been looking for an inflection point and it keeps getting pushed out and pushed out. If we don&rsquo;t see it in the next few quarters, our concerns would be heightened."</p>
<p>Salespeople <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9">have told Business Insider</a> that under Hurd's plan their territories are too small, and there are too many of them all hitting up the same customers. The revenue increase, however, suggests those criticisms may not be seeing the bigger picture.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Oracle's management insists it's got a line-up of new products that enterprises are eager to buy, including new cloud computing products, new hardware designed to run its apps, and a new database, the 12c. The database market is Oracle's bread-and-butter. The 12c database was created for cloud computing and runs at "ungodly" speeds, as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-data-at-ungodly-speeds-2013-9">Ellison once described it. </a></p>
<p>"We've seen more interest in 12c than any database version in recent memory," Ellison said on Wednesday. He predicted that the company would see "very rapid uptake" in sales of this database in 2014 and 2015.</p>
<p>Olson says that if Oracle doesn't deliver on those promises and posts "another big miss" in its fourth quarter, the one that ends in June, that means the "rumors of the sales force being disgruntled" could be true. Or it could mean that enterprises are starting to use new, rival database technologies like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-guy-that-invented-an-amazing-big-data-tech-says-oracle-and-microsoft-should-not-be-afraid-2012-5">Hadoop</a> or <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-latest-threat-to-oracles-database-empire-2013-6">noSQL</a> databases.</p>
<p>Olson is bullish that Oracle will do well, and the changes in the sales force will pay off. Edward Jones has reiterated its buy rating for Oracle, he said.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/best-22-tech-companies-to-work-for-2013-12" >The 22 Best Tech Companies To Work For, According To Employees</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-says-oracle-salesforce-wont-be-reorganized-2013-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-reorgs-makes-nice-with-hp-2013-12Source: Oracle Is Quietly Reorganizing Its Sales Force And Signing A Huge Agreement With HP (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-reorgs-makes-nice-with-hp-2013-12
Tue, 17 Dec 2013 20:16:00 -0500Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/523fb8d4eab8ea755eefd356-480-/larry-ellison-913.png" border="0" alt="Larry Ellison" width="480" /></p><p>Oracle will report its quarterly financial results at the close of the stock market on Wednesday. Analysts are expecting flat revenues but we're hearing that there could be a couple of bigger items of interest:</p>
<ul>
<li>A reorganization of the U.S. sales force, which may be announced only internally, not publicly.</li>
<li>A big new agreement with former-partner-turned-bitter-rival, Hewlett Packard.</li>
</ul>
<p>Both of those tidbits come from Wall Street analyst Pat Walravens, director of technology research for JMP Securities, one of the analysts who closely follows Oracle <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-anthony-fernicola-joins-salesforcecom-2013-8">and breaks a lot of news about the company.</a></p>
<p>Walravens&nbsp;tells us that the reorg could be taking place in the current quarter and that people inside Oracle expect to be called into a meeting "to announce the change later this week." There may also be news about a restructured hardware business.</p>
<p>Oracle declined comment when reached by Business Insider.</p>
<p>Most analysts are expecting less-than-stellar financial results from Oracle. The consensus is 67 cents a share on sales of $9.2 billion. That's flat revenues from the year-ago quarter, and slightly improved profits.</p>
<p>Walravens expects software sales to be flat, and hardware revenue to be worse than expected, diving 13%. Oracle has said hardware revenue will be down 1% - 11%. Oracle's hardware sales have declined heavily for 11 quarters in a row.</p>
<p>So a reorg of the North American sales force could be good news.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9">As we've previously reported,</a> Oracle president Mark Hurd has been systematically overhauling the sales force for more than two years, but so far, his changes haven't sparked the kind of growth analysts would like to see.</p>
<p>When he began, we started hearing stories about how some of the company's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-former-employees-explain-why-it-cant-sell-hardware-2012-4">more experienced salespeople were quitting</a> because the atmosphere had become too cutthroat and stressful.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, we talked to one salesperson who quit the company less than a year after joining. This person told us that, under Hurd, the sales territory was less than 20 square miles of a metropolitan area and included so few companies that it would have been very difficult to earn the quota Oracle expected, about $2 million in annual sales.</p>
<p>"My territory was extremely small. The amount of business I could call on, I exhausted that in the amount of time I was there. They wanted you to keep calling those same companies. I'm not the kind of sales rep that's going to call on the same company over and over," this person told us.</p>
<p>Walravens is hearing similar stories. As he reported in his research note, an Oracle reseller told him that in one territory alone Oracle had "16 reps just [selling] on the database. I don&rsquo;t know how they make a living."</p>
<p>We're told that the North American sales teams to be restructured report to <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/executives/matthew-mills-bio-1686531.html">Matt Mills</a>. These could be the teams that included top North American sales guy <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-anthony-fernicola-joins-salesforcecom-2013-8">Anthony Fernicola, who moved to Salesforce.com.</a> (Correction: The story originally said Mills took over for Fernicola. We've since been told that this is not correct.)</p>
<p>On top of all that, Oracle may have patched up its relationship with HP.</p>
<p>Walravens understands that HP has signed a $150 million contract to renew its Oracle licenses, a contract that may or may not be announced. HP has always been a big Oracle customer, and for decades was a close partner who helped sell Oracle technology. But their relationship went south after Oracle bought Sun and started competing head-to-head in the hardware market with HP.</p>
<p>Oracle also hired Hurd after HP asked him to resign as CEO, which lead to a lawsuit that was ultimately settled. Then Oracle said it would stop making its database software for HP's flagship Itanium computer servers. That lead to another lawsuit, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-wins-its-lawsuit-against-oracle-2012-8">which HP won</a>.</p>
<p>Given its lack of overall growth, Oracle may have decided it needs HP again. Given Oracle's lackluster hardware sales, HP may have decided that Oracle isn't much of a threat. "Sun is a lot smaller than when Oracle bought it," Walravens points out.</p>
<p>If that's the case, the companies may announce a big kiss-and-make-up partnership, similar to the one Oracle signed <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-and-salesforce-partner-on-cloud-2013-6">last summer</a> with another friend-turned-rival, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-and-salesforce-partner-on-cloud-2013-6">Salesforce.com.</a></p>
<p>But that's just speculation at this point. Sources close to HP tell us that they haven't heard about a new contract or partnership with Oracle.</p>
<p>HP also had no comment.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9" >THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-reorgs-makes-nice-with-hp-2013-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-skills-of-great-leaders-2013-12The Only 3 Skills That Great Leaders Needhttp://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-skills-of-great-leaders-2013-12
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 12:32:24 -0500Alison Griswold
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/52a78b846da8112568cdd75c-480-/mark-hurd-oracle-5.png" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd Oracle" width="480" /></p><p>Mark Hurd, the president of Oracle Corporation, wants to simplify the leadership dialogue.</p>
<p>"There&rsquo;s a powerful tendency to overcomplicate the whole notion of leadership," he writes in a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131209140015-178173598-five-leadership-qualities-great-executives-must-have?trk=tod-posts-post1-ptlt" target="_blank">recent post on LinkedIn</a>. "<span>In my own career, and with the great executives on my team now, I try to keep the leadership formula pretty simple."</span></p>
<p><span>For his own purposes, Hurd has distilled the essentials of great leadership to three things:</span></p>
<ol>
<li>Getting the strategy right</li>
<li>Executing that strategy</li>
<li>Putting the right people in the right places</li>
</ol>
<p>Hurd says "getting the strategy right" is more important now than ever before because of how fast today's world moves. "Consumer tastes and needs are shifting faster and more dramatically than ever before. Do you have a sustainable strategy... that lets you keep pace with this relentless upheaval?" he asks.</p>
<p>Once created, that strategy is useless without people who can execute it. Hurd says it's up to the CEO to "drive operational excellence that brings the strategy alive." And part of doing that is his third pointer &mdash; put the right people in place. "After formulating and communicating the right strategy, and optimizing operations to execute that strategy, CEOs and other top leaders then must be able to build management teams that truly understand the big picture," he explains.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131209140015-178173598-five-leadership-qualities-great-executives-must-have?trk=tod-posts-post1-ptlt" target="_blank">Click here to read his full post.</a></p>
<p><em>Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:tipoftheday@businessinsider.com">tipoftheday@businessinsider.com</a>. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.</em></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-skills-of-great-leaders-2013-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/salesperson-why-i-joined-oracle-2013-9ORACLE SALESPERSON: Here's Why I Joined The Company Even Though Others Are Leavinghttp://www.businessinsider.com/salesperson-why-i-joined-oracle-2013-9
Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:46:00 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5249e3f96bb3f7e64267b05b-480-/larry-ellison-oracle-1.png" border="0" alt="Larry Ellison Oracle" width="480" /></p><p>We've been closely watching Oracle president <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9">Mark Hurd's overhaul of Oracle's salesforce</a>.</p>
<p>Hurd's plans have been controversial within the company and have caused a long string of Oracle's most <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-former-employees-explain-why-it-cant-sell-hardware-2012-4">experienced salespeople to quit</a>, sources have told us.</p>
<p>Hurd's plan involves giving Oracle salespeople quotas to sell certain types of Oracle hardware in addition to software, notably the "Exa" hardware product line, sources say. (The "Exa" servers are specially designed to run Oracle software.)</p>
<p>Hurd is also hiring thousands of new salespeople, and making each specialize in certain software products. He wants each salesperson to have fewer clients, with teams selling more Oracle software to each enterprise, sources say. By April of this year, Oracle had increased the sales force by 4,000 people, Hurd said, and he's still hiring.</p>
<p>Hurd's plan has yet to drive much revenue growth. Oracle has missed analyst's revenue expectations <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-reports-earnings-2013-9">three quarters in a row</a>.&nbsp; Plus, the company warned that next quarter, revenue for new software and subscriptions should land in a range of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/18/us-oracle-results-idUSBRE98H12C20130918">down 4 percent to up 6 percent, from the year-ago quarter.</a></p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5249e44969bedd12539232ab-400-300/mark-hurd-7.jpg" border="0" alt="mark hurd" width="300" />That said, thousands of salespeople are still betting their careers on Oracle. We just talked to one new hire who requested anonymity. We can tell you that the person left a senior role at one of the world's largest enterprise tech companies to join Oracle.</p>
<p><strong>Business Insider: Why did you take this job at Oracle?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Salesperson:</strong> I'm getting a chance to work with [an industry very concerned about security] that is still buying a lot of on-premises software, instead of the cloud. The large enterprise IT companies have really struggled with how to compensate the salesforce in the cloud model.</p>
<p><strong>BI: So you feel that you'll make more money at Oracle because you can sell traditional software licenses instead of selling cloud subscriptions?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Salesperson:</strong> Yes.&nbsp; Even the mediocre performers selling enterprise license software are going to be making in the $300,000-$350,000 range where top performers are going to make $400,000-$600,000.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Other than the pure cloud companies (like Salesforce.com or Amazon), large enterprise companies like IBM, Cisco, EMC, Microsoft are struggling with compensating salespeople on the old model versus selling cloud-based software.</span></p>
<p><strong>BI: Does Oracle's hardware quotas worry you?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Salesperson:</strong> Yes. It's very challenging in this austere environment. But that's the same for EMC, IBM, Cisco. To make the most money, you need to hit those accelerators [a bigger % of commissions earned once a salesperson meets a quota, including the hardware quota]. So they really put the onus on the hardware guys to help the software guys to get these deals done.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Does it concern you that many long-term salespeople recently left Oracle?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Salesperson:</strong> Everyone realizes that there's no retirement, no gold watch, no pension. People are following the money where they think they are going to make their number.</p>
<p>I don't think Oracle recruits very well. I told my spouse, they are a delightfully arrogant company to work for.</p>
<p>But their benefits are great, their training is great, their engineering resources are great. They give the salespeople everything they need to be successful.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9" >THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/salesperson-why-i-joined-oracle-2013-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/saps-platner-rips-oracles-mark-hurd-2013-9'Keep Your Mouth Shut,' Billionaire SAP Founder Tells Oracle's Mark Hurd (ORCL, SAP)http://www.businessinsider.com/saps-platner-rips-oracles-mark-hurd-2013-9
Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:47:00 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5249be5a6bb3f7287767b05d-480-/mark-hurd-oracle.png" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd Oracle" width="480" /></p><p>The oldest, most heated rivalry in the enterprise tech world has just flared up again. SAP's billionaire cofounder, Hasso Plattner, is now throwing punches at Oracle president Mark Hurd.</p>
<p>Plattner <a href="http://www.saphana.com/community/blogs/blog/2013/09/29/hasso-plattner-blog">wrote in a blog post on Monday</a>, "When it comes to competition you should either know exactly what your are talking about, or keep your mouth shut."</p>
<p>He was responding to things Hurd said about the SAP HANA database at a press conference last week. Hurd spoke to reporters shortly after Oracle introduced a new in-memory database&nbsp;that competes with SAP's in-memory database, called HANA. Oracle also introduced a new "Exadata" hardware product that runs its new in-memory database.</p>
<p>In-memory databases are where an entire database, even an enormous one, is stored in a server's memory, not on a hard disk. That means it can crunch through vast amounts of data&nbsp; instantly and isn't slowed down by grabbing data from the disk.</p>
<p>With these new products, Oracle is trying to keep SAP's customers from yanking out their Oracle database and replacing it with SAP's database. Here's what Hurd said at the conference, reported by <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049284/hurd-sap-hana-isnt-even-comparable-to-oracles-inmemory-technology.html">Chris Kanaracus from IDG News Service</a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"I don't like it when [Oracle's] Exadata or the in-memory options get compared with SAP HANA ...I don't think it's even comparable. HANA has to be programmed. What we told you about [with the new 12c database] has nothing to do with that. You're not rewriting anything." Putting it more bluntly, Hurd said about SAP, "Forget them."</p>
<p>To which Plattner responded:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Fact is: nobody likes to be replaced by a competitor's solution. A good defense is to build a better product, not to bad mouth the competition with straight lies."</p>
<p>Plattner then went into a technical deep dive about how databases work, refuting that Oracle apps need "reprogramming" when used with SAP's HANA.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5249be81ecad047575fa799a-302-226/hasso-plattner-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Hasso Plattner" width="300" />The fighting words are entertaining, but this is serious business. By some accounts there are <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ellison-to-reveal-weapon-against-sap-2013-9">at least 60,000 enterprises </a>out there using SAP's apps with the Oracle database.</p>
<p>In two years since HANA launched, SAP has snagged some 2,000 customers for it, it says. <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049284/hurd-sap-hana-isnt-even-comparable-to-oracles-inmemory-technology.html">SAP hinted that about 300 HANA customers</a> are using it with SAP's financial apps, although it won't say how many switched from Oracle to HANA.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But clearly, there's a lot at stake and executives at both companies are ready to fight.</p>
<p>We reached out to Oracle for comment.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9" >THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/saps-platner-rips-oracles-mark-hurd-2013-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: It's Crunch Time For Oracle And Mark Hurd (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9
Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:21:00 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/523878416bb3f7f16cb5655a-800-/mark-hurd-6.jpg" border="0" alt="Mark Hurd" width="800" /></p><p>Enterprise software giant Oracle reported its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The company <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-reports-earnings-2013-9">did not meet Wall Street's expectations on revenue,</a> making this a startling three earnings misses in a row.</p>
<p>Another whiff is not good news for Oracle's once-unstoppable stock price, which has languished for the last two years. (The stock is dropping in after hours trading).</p>
<p>It is also not good news for Oracle's relatively new president, Mark Hurd.</p>
<p>Under Hurd, who joined the company three years ago after getting forced out as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Oracle is in the midst of overhauling its legendary salesforce. The jury is still out on whether Hurd's changes will work or not.</p>
<p>Hurd's revamp has been going on for about two years now. Two years ago, we started hearing stories about how <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-former-employees-explain-why-it-cant-sell-hardware-2012-4">many of the company's most experienced salespeople were quitting</a> because the atmosphere had become too cutthroat and stressful and salespeople didn't like where Hurd was taking the company.</p>
<p>People leave jobs all the time, of course, and with a salesforce the size of Oracle's, significant turnover is normal. But in some cases, entire Oracle sales teams were leaving to work together at competitors, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-loses-experienced-salespeople-2013-7">Wall Street analyst Pat Walravens told Business Insider. </a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/insider-mark-hurd-is-chasing-away-oracles-best-sales-people-2012-6">Veteran Oracle salespeople started finding new jobs</a> at companies like ServiceSource, Workday, Infor, VMware, Microsoft, SAP and Salesforce.com.</p>
<p>After Oracle's former head of North American sales, Keith Block, landed at Salesforce.com a few months ago, a year after he left Oracle, top salespeople started joining Salesforce.com in particular. I<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">n the past few weeks, for example, </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-anthony-fernicola-joins-salesforcecom-2013-8">17-year veteran Tony Fernicola</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">; 10-year veteran </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matt-pitner/0/2b8/36b">Matt Pitner</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and 17-year veteran, </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-rey/3/968/110">Dave Rey</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;have all left Oracle to join Salesforce.com.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-cross/74/a81/b6a">Paul Cross</a>, who was the former group vice president of Oracle's pre-sales unit, a team of 500, recently left to work for Oracle database competitor MongoDB (formerly known as 10gen).</p>
<p>A source inside Oracle tells us that more people are leaving this week as part of another "internal reorg." We have heard a report (as yet unconfirmed) that a 17-year New York-based senior vice president responsible for a good chunk of North American sales has just resigned.</p>
<p><span>Under legendary tough-man and CEO Larry Ellison, Oracle has always been a competitive, but very lucrative, place to work. But the recent turnover has alarmed Wall Street. Despite Mark Hurd's assurances that Oracle's sales force attrition rate has dropped, t</span>here are still recent examples of Oracle salespeople leaving for greener pastures. And some within the company attribute this to dissatisfaction and frustration with the Hurd regime.</p>
<p><span>"I put in my notice recently," o<span>ne salesperson told us this week.</span>&nbsp;"I hate watching what Hurd is doing and am not going to stick around to see the end of it. Leaving is very hard because I love my colleagues and immediate management. There is not a better or more talented sales force out there. The internal competition drove all of us to be better and I, personally, loved the idea that B and C players don't last here very long."</span></p>
<h3>Mark Hurd's grand plan</h3>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5238796fecad04c67ab27513-398-299/larry-ellison-fingers-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Larry Ellison fingers" />Oracle's sales culture started to change in 2010, after Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and president Charles Phillips left. (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/infors-charles-phillips-vs-steve-jobs-2013-9">Phillips landed as CEO at Infor</a>, an enterprise software company that competes with Oracle.)</p>
<p>Phillips was&nbsp;<span>replaced by Hurd.</span> Hurd came to Oracle after he was forced out as CEO of HP for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-hurd-jodie-fisher-hp-2011-12">allegedly using HP's resources inappropriately</a>.</p>
<p>Hurd had a mixed reputation at HP. &nbsp;The company's revenues and profits grew significantly when he was at the helm, helped by acquisitions. But <span>Hurd's cost-cutting&nbsp;</span>was extreme, and according to some&nbsp;<a href="http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/08/500-hp-apotheker/">HP employees</a>,&nbsp;<span>it eventually hurt the company.</span></p>
<p>Larry Ellison, a friend of Hurd's, immediately jumped to Hurd's defense. He blasted the HP board as imbeciles for pushing him out and hired Hurd to help Oracle figure out how to sell hardware. With the recent purchase of Sun Microsystems, Oracle was reaching into new markets and businesses, and selling enterprise software isn't the same as selling hardware. For starters, the people who buy hardware for companies are often different than the people who buy software. The contractual requirements are different, too. For instance, a hardware contract typically covers on-site repairs. You don't send a repairman to fix broken software.</p>
<p>Oracle has struggled to sell hardware. Shortly before Block, head of North American sales,&nbsp; left the company this year, a bunch of instant messages from Block were made public. In the messages, Block<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-mark-hurd-sun-hardware-quote-we-bought-a-dog-2012-5#ixzz1yAiDFHKy">&nbsp;bashed Sun System's hardware</a> and said no one wanted to buy it.</p>
<p>When Mark Hurd got to Oracle, he set about doing two things:</p>
<p>First, he gave existing Oracle software salespeople big hardware quotas, particularly for the new hardware devices that Oracle calls "engineered systems,"&nbsp;such as its Exadata and Exalytics appliances, insiders have told us. These appliances are designed to run Oracle software.</p>
<p>Under Hurd's new commission plan, if salespeople didn't make their quota on "Exa" devices, no matter how much software they sold, they wouldn't make their "accelerators" &mdash; an increase in commissions.</p>
<p>For understandable reasons, this was frustrating for Oracle veterans.</p>
<p>"I didn't have the opportunity to sell Exadata. I probably missed out on $600,000 on accelerator commissions," one&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-loses-experienced-salespeople-2013-7">salesperson told us</a>.</p>
<p>Second, Mark Hurd made a significant change to Oracle's sales strategy: He began to radically increase the size of Oracle's salesforce, with the aim of having salespeople specialize in selling only certain products and cover fewer clients.</p>
<p>There are a finite number of businesses big enough to need, and afford, Oracle's expensive software, so Hurd wanted each salesperson to have fewer accounts and sell more software to each one.</p>
<p>By April of this year, Oracle had increased the sales force by 4,000 people, Hurd said. And he plans to continue to expand the sales force going forward.</p>
<p>So Hurd changed the way Oracle's salespeople were compensated with the aim of selling more hardware, and he hired more salespeople and reduced the number of accounts covered by each salesperson.</p>
<p>But in the fiercely competitive enterprise technology business, it's not easy to get companies to buy more hardware and software, especially in a stagnant economy. Oracle's sales q<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">uotas, meanwhile, have remained high. So instead of selling more software to each customer, Oracle's salespeople have often wound up fighting over the same customers and the same software deals, sources at the company have told us.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And the overall results haven't been encouraging.</span></p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/521cf72fecad0429193a6bbf-400-300/safra-catz-oracle.jpg" border="0" alt="Safra Catz Oracle" /></p>
<h3>Two Lousy Quarters And Counting...</h3>
<p>In March of this year, Oracle reported its fiscal third quarter results. The news was not good. Oracle missed Wall Street expectations. And the company's president and CFO, Safra Catz,&nbsp;<a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/1290881-oracles-ceo-discusses-f3q13-results-earnings-call-transcript">publicly blamed the sales force</a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Since we&rsquo;ve been adding literally thousands of new sales reps around the world, the problem was largely sales execution, especially with the new reps, as they ran out of runway in Q3," she said&nbsp;on a conference call with analysts.</p>
<p>Then, another quarter later, there came more bad news.</p>
<p>Instead of posting a killer fiscal fourth quarter, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/live-oracles-earnings-2013-6">Oracle blew it again.</a></p>
<p>Historically, it has been rare for Oracle to miss Wall Street's earnings expectations, especially in the last quarter of its fiscal year. That's when salespeople push hardest to close deals to make their annual quotas. But for the second quarter in a row, Oracle missed.</p>
<p>Following the weak fourth quarter results, Mark Hurd defended his sales strategy, saying that salespeople were no longer quitting at the rate they once were. "I want to say this again, our attrition rates are down. They have declined," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-loses-experienced-salespeople-2013-7">he told analysts on the quarterly conference call.</a></p>
<p>Others at Oracle had a different impression.</p>
<p>"Hundreds of people are leaving each quarter," a current salesperson told us a few months ago, right before Oracle announced its forth quarter.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That echoed what we had heard from other salespeople and Oracle insiders for more than a year.</span></p>
<p>"People don't leave great companies," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/insider-mark-hurd-is-chasing-away-oracles-best-sales-people-2012-6">one former salesperson</a>&nbsp;who left Oracle told us last year. &nbsp;"They leave poor management and leadership. I thought I would retire at Oracle. Loved it! Oracle is a great company that lost its focus on their people and brought in a leader that doesn't balance out the strong-minded Larry Ellison." He was referring to Hurd.</p>
<p>Mark Hurd's defenders dismiss the recent salesforce departures as meaningless. In a salesforce the size of Oracle's, they point out, people leave all the time. Hurd's defenders acknowledge that Hurd's changes haven't been popular with some Oracle veterans, but they observe that Hurd's goal is not to retain everyone but to transform Oracle's salesforce. Hurd's defenders point to his remarks about Oracle's salesforce attrition rate declining, and&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">they stress that the sales force is growing rapidly--exactly as Hurd has promised.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Hurd's critics aren't impressed by this defense. Oracle's salesforce is growing, they say, because Hurd is replacing experienced salespeople with rookies who won't be as effective. For example, Hurd is now hiring hundreds of college grads and </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jill-rowley-is-charged-with-transforming-oracles-sales-force-2013-7">training them as sales people, mostly to sell its cloud-based solutions.</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"Hurd wants to throw inexpensive bodies (new college hires) at the problem," <span>said one salesperson who just resigned.</span>&nbsp; "It will be interesting to see what the Q1 numbers look like."&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>The jury is still out on whether Hurd's changes will end up helping or hurting Oracle's sales force. What is certain is that big hardware sales for Oracle have yet to materialize.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-hardware-biz-didnt-grow-2013-3">Larry Ellison had originally promised</a> that Oracle's hardware business was going to stop shrinking by February of this year and start growing by May.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But last March, </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-hardware-biz-didnt-grow-2013-3">Ellison pushed this promise back</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, saying that the hardware business won't level off until the quarter that just ended in August, Oracle's fiscal Q1, 2014.</span></p>
<p>This week's results will reveal whether that is indeed the case.</p>
<p>Before publishing this story, we reached out to Oracle to see if the company wanted to comment.</p>
<p>Oracle did, in fact, want to comment, and the comment was intriguing:</p>
<p>"This story is so ludicrous that it doesn't even warrant our time or attention," <span>Oracle spokesperson Deborah Hellinger said.</span>&nbsp;"Let me check the mood rings here and we will get back to you on how happy or unhappy our sales force is today."&nbsp;</p>
<p>That comment, needless to say, is full of the aggressive bravado that Oracle has long been famous for.</p>
<p>The comment is so aggressive, in fact, that it strikes us as the sort of asymmetrically informed remark that an insider might make on the eve of an earnings report that will shut up Oracle's critics and doubters once and for all.</p>
<p>But, then again, maybe it's just Oracle being Oracle.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-sales-force-changes-2013-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-president-mark-hurd-joins-twitter-2013-5Oracle President Mark Hurd Joins Twitter, And He Already Has Almost As Many Tweets As Larry Ellison (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-president-mark-hurd-joins-twitter-2013-5
Sat, 25 May 2013 14:30:00 -0400Kevin McLaughlin
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/519ff0d869beddcb70000007-401-300/mark-hurd-2.jpg" border="0" alt="mark hurd" width="401" height="300" /></p><p>Oracle co-President Mark Hurd,&nbsp;who's busy&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-how-screwed-up-oracles-sales-org-is-2012-4">revamping Oracle's sales force</a>, has officially joined Twitter, as <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkVHurd">@MarkVHurd.</a></p>
<p>Hurd hasn't tweeted yet.</p>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript"></script>
<p><span>As of&nbsp;</span><span>Friday evening East Coast time, Hurd had 78 followers &mdash; most of them Oracle employees &mdash; and was following 67 other Twitter users. </span></p>
<p><span>Hurd played tennis at his alma mater Baylor University, and he's following the team on Twitter. But as of Friday, he wasn't yet following his boss, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>Jill Rowley, a "social sales evangelist" who joined Oracle in April in its acquisition of Eloqua, was first to welcome Hurd to Twitter on Friday:&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p>Welcome to Twitter @<a href="https://twitter.com/markvhurd">markvhurd</a>! Our customers are looking forward to your insights. <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23SocialSelling">#SocialSelling</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23SocialBusiness">#SocialBusiness</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23Transformation">#Transformation</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/oracle">oracle</a></p>
&mdash; Jill Rowley (@jill_rowley) <a href="https://twitter.com/jill_rowley/status/338013654081495041">May 24, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><span></span>Ellison, who joined Twitter last June,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/larryellison/status/210503900887924736">has himself only tweeted once</a>. "<span>Oracle's got 100+ enterprise applications live in the </span><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23cloud&amp;src=hash" class="twitter-hashtag pretty-link js-nav" data-query-source="hashtag_click"><s>#</s><strong>cloud</strong></a><span> today, SAP's got nothin' but SuccessFactors until 2020," Ellison said in his only tweet since joining.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>But at least Ellison has a Twitter account. Safra Catz, Oracle's other co-president, doesn't have one. Neither does SAP CEO Bill McDermott. There are at least 25 parody accounts for Steve Ballmer, but he's not on Twitter either. Meg Whitman's last tweet was in October 2011.&nbsp;</p>
<p>It seems like top enterprise execs feel like there's more to be lost on Twitter than there is to be gained.&nbsp;</p>
<p>We reached out to Oracle for comment on Hurd's arrival to Twitter, but haven't heard back.&nbsp;But a source told us his account has been set up for about three or four months &mdash; he's just been too busy to start using it.&nbsp;</p>
<p>That makes sense since Hurd, after Oracle's disappointing earnings last quarter, has vowed to streamline the company's salesforce, which has added some 4,000 new members in the last year and a half.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-offers-to-share-windows-hack-2013-5" >A Google Engineer Who Loves Annoying Microsoft Says He's Found A New Windows 7 And 8 Bug</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-president-mark-hurd-joins-twitter-2013-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-mark-hurd-to-sap-good-luck-stealing-our-customers-2013-4Oracle's Mark Hurd To SAP: Good Luck Stealing Our Customers (ORCL, SAP)http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-mark-hurd-to-sap-good-luck-stealing-our-customers-2013-4
Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:21:16 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/516c3d0069bedd4619000007-400-300/mark-hurd-1.jpg" border="0" alt="mark hurd" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>One of the oldest, most epic rivalries in the tech world is <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/oracle">Oracle</a> versus <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/sap">SAP</a>.</p>
<p>Execs at both enterprise software companies like to trash talk and otherwise insult each other. SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-most-outrageous-larry-ellison-stories-2012-1">once mooned Larry Ellison's boat</a> on the high seas. Ellison once said that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/best-larry-ellison-quotes-2013-4">SAP execs "must be on drugs.</a>"&nbsp; A SAP executive even wrote <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-sap-president-wrote-a-funny-song-poking-fun-of-larry-ellison-2013-2">a humorous song</a> poking fun at Oracle and released it on <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/youtube">YouTube</a>.</p>
<p>Now, Oracle co-president <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/mark-hurd">Mark Hurd</a> offered a little smack talk of his own, saying in an interview that if HANA is the "most innovative" thing that SAP can do, "good luck to them."</p>
<p>He was referring to SAP's latest weapon against Oracle, an in-memory database called HANA, which can crunch enormous amounts of data almost instantly, far faster than a traditional Oracle database.</p>
<p>SAP is hoping its customers will <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sap-business-suite-erp-hana-2013-1">yank out their Oracle databases</a> and use HANA instead. SAP executives have called HANA the fastest growing product in SAP's history. SAP's co-CEO <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bill-mcdermott">Bill McDermott</a> even declared it was "the fastest growing software product in the history of the world."</p>
<p>While some people <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-analyst-rushes-to-saps-defense-2013-4">question how SAP derived such claims</a>, there's no question that Oracle is watching SAP and HANA carefully.</p>
<p>On Friday, Oracle co-President Mark Hurd jumped in. He pshawed SAP and HANA in an interview with <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238374/Oracle_39_s_Mark_Hurd_talks_Fusion_Applications_customer_satisfaction_and_SAP_39_s_HANA">Computerworld's Chris Kanaracus</a>. When asked about SAP's intention to grab database customers from Oracle with HANA, Hurd replied:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Are you going to take your core ERP and change out the infrastructure, with the risk that it falls apart, the risk that it doesn't work? Our view has been for SAP, particularly, if they want to spend their time and money going after database, that's great. ... <strong>If that's their most innovative thing, good luck to them."</strong></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/best-larry-ellison-quotes-2013-4" >The Most Controversial And Entertaining Things Larry Ellison Has Ever Said</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-mark-hurd-to-sap-good-luck-stealing-our-customers-2013-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-mark-hurd-dell-ceo-job-2013-3Oracle's Mark Hurd Says He's Got 'No Interest' In Becoming CEO Of Dellhttp://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-mark-hurd-dell-ceo-job-2013-3
Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:55:00 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5059eb9669bedd4e62000009-400-300/mark-hurd-oracle-1.jpg" border="0" alt="mark hurd oracle" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>Now that <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/dell">Dell</a>'s board is entertaining&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dell-reveals-details-of-buyout-offers-2013-3">two new takeover offers</a>&nbsp;that might get rid of founder <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/michael-dell">Michael Dell</a> as CEO, the question is who would replace him.</p>
<p>One of the would-be new owners of Dell, <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/blackstone">Blackstone</a> Management, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackstone-icahn-set-up-three-way-battle-to-buy-out-dell-2013-3">is reportedly in hot pursuit of Mark Hurd</a>, co-president of <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/oracle">Oracle</a> and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/larry-ellison">Larry Ellison</a>'s right-hand man.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackstone-icahn-set-up-three-way-battle-to-buy-out-dell-2013-3">Hurd already privately turned Blackstone down</a>, sources told <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/reuters">Reuters</a>.</p>
<p>He recently went public with his no-thank-you, too. While opening a new cloud-computing center for Oracle in Tokyo on Monday, reporters asked Hurd if we would leave his current job for Dell.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very happy at Oracle," he replied. "No interest."</p>
<p>One of Oracle's top PR people, Deborah Hellinger, is helping spread the word of Hurd's lack of interest. She tweeted Hurd's response:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/mark-hurd">Mark Hurd</a> in Japan goes on the record on <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23Dell">#Dell</a>: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very happy at Oracle. No interest." <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23oracle">#oracle</a> <a href="http://t.co/pYsKAM9fDK" title="http://twitter.com/dhellinger/status/316112696376426496/photo/1">twitter.com/dhellinger/sta&hellip;</a></p>
&mdash; deborah hellinger (@dhellinger) <a href="https://twitter.com/dhellinger/status/316112696376426496">March 25, 2013</a></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Hurd is handling a critical job for Oracle. To lose him now would be a blow to the company. With his experience running hardware-centric companies like Hewlett-Packard and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/ncr">NCR</a>, he's helping Oracle move from its software roots into hardware as it integrates its <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/sun-microsystems">Sun Microsystems</a> acquisition.</span></p>
<p>Hardware has been an uphill battle for Oracle, so far. Hardware revenues have declined quarter after quarter. That's been on purpose, Ellison says. Oracle is trimming away low-margin, commodity hardware products it inherited when it bought Sun to focus on its new, highly profitable "engineered systems" where the hardware and software were designed to run together.</p>
<p>In fact, it's unveiling<a href="http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=165654&amp;src=7618691&amp;src=7618691&amp;Act=915"> its latest, greatest, faster server</a> later today, too.</p>
<p>Hurd is responsible for building a salesforce that can sell these engineered systems.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-hardware-biz-didnt-grow-2013-3" >Ellison: Oracle's Hardware Business Won't Grow This Fiscal Year After All</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-mark-hurd-dell-ceo-job-2013-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cloud-computing-2013-1Oracle Has Big Plans To Beat Salesforce And Amazon In A $72 Billion Market (ORCL)http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cloud-computing-2013-1
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:29:00 -0500Julie Bort
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/51098dc6ecad047a0e000019-400-300/mark-hurd-oracle-2.jpg" border="0" alt="mark hurd oracle" width="400" height="300" />Oracle this week explained its plans to push into the </span><a href="http://resource.onlinetech.com/cloud-infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas-spending-to-exceed-72-billion-by-2016/">$72 billion cloud-computing</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> market.</span></p>
<p>During a phone call with reporters on Monday, Oracle president Mark Hurd gave more detail on the plan the company had first unveiled on <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1897474">January 15</a>.</p>
<p>Oracle is trying to grab a slice of the "infrastructure-as-a-service" (IaaS) market away from Amazon, Rackspace, IBM, and others.</p>
<p>Cloud computing is a vast market, involving software apps, storage, computing power, and other resources. The infrastructure part of cloud usually involves providing the basic computing resources on which customers can run operating systems and software of their choosing.</p>
<p>Oracle's scheme is completely different from the way most companies approach IaaS.</p>
<p>Oracle will install its high-end hardware, which it calls "engineered systems," loaded with Oracle software in a customer's data center. The customer doesn't share those systems with others&mdash;a differentiator from most cloud setups. It pays a monthly fee to rent them. This is often called a "private cloud"&mdash;but involving hardware, not just software.</p>
<p>It's a bold plan for Oracle. And a smart one, longtime Oracle watcher Rick Sherlund of Nomura Securities told Business Insider.</p>
<p>"You've got [Salesforce.com CEO Marc] Benioff on the one hand, saying Oracle doesn't get the cloud and Oracle saying hold on a second, a lot of mission-critical applications might be better behind the firewall, in a private cloud setting," he said. "In that environment, Oracle has a lot of strengths."</p>
<p>Sherlund is referring to a long-standing feud between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff which dates back to 2011. That's when Benioff <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/05/after-a-cancelled-keynote-salesforce-ceo-strikes-back-talks-future-of-the-cloud-from-a-restaurant/">called Oracle's products &ldquo;the false cloud"</a> and Ellison called <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/05/after-a-cancelled-keynote-salesforce-ceo-strikes-back-talks-future-of-the-cloud-from-a-restaurant/">Salesforce.com &ldquo;the roach motel of clouds.&rdquo; </a></p>
<p>Benioff was right in some ways. Oracle can't offer its software in the same manner as Salesforce.com. Its software was built before clouds, when companies didn't share software or hardware, a concept called "multi-tenancy."</p>
<p>"Oracle can't do what Salesforce.com has done and create multi-tenancy apps out of on-premise apps that were never designed for multi-tenancy," Sherlund said. "Faced with that obstacle, Oracle redefines the problem."</p>
<p>Oracle's customers could very well love this. Most enterprises are starting to experiment with cloud computing, but they won't trust their most important data and databases to it. After all, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-apologizes-for-netflix-outage-2012-12">Amazon is known to go down fairly frequently.</a></p>
<p>The pay-as-you-go scheme isn't really cheaper for companies, much as leasing a car isn't always a cheaper deal than buying it. Oracle customers must sign a three-year deal and they'll pay 80% of the list price for the hardware, plus pay for the software and a monthly usage fee on top of that, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/oracle-wants-cloud-cake-and-hardware-win/240147199">reports InformationWeek's Doug Henschen.</a></p>
<p>But they won't have to come up with millions of dollars up front, which may attract some.</p>
<p><strong>Don't miss: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-moguls-pet-projects-2013-1" class="title">How 15 Tech Tycoons Spend Their Fortunes</a></strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-cloud-computing-2013-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-mark-hurds-hp-2013-1Steve Jobs (Of All People) Tried To Save Mark Hurd's Job At HP (HPQ, AAPL)http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-mark-hurds-hp-2013-1
Thu, 10 Jan 2013 11:28:00 -0500Jay Yarow
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/50eeeb3feab8eaa855000010-400/hp-patricia-dunn-mark-hurd.jpg" border="0" alt="HP Patricia Dunn Mark Hurd" /></p><p>It's getting to be ancient history at this point, but Mark Hurd's ouster at HP is one of those stories that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-hps-stock-after-mark-hurd-2012-8">looms large</a>.</p>
<p>Since Hurd was fired at HP, the company has been in a tailspin.</p>
<p>He was ousted as CEO of the company for fudging expense reports related to an inappropriate relationship he kept with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jodie-fisher-mark-hurd">Jodie Fisher</a>, a b-movie actress who was a hostess for HP events.</p>
<p>Despite the scandal that engulfed Hurd's departure, he had an unlikely ally in his fight to stay at HP.</p>
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/steve-jobs">Steve Jobs</a> was willing to help Hurd retain his job as CEO, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/can-meg-whitman-reverse-hewlett-packards-free-fall">according to a new Bloomberg BusinessWeek story on HP</a>.</p>
<p>Three days after Hurd was fired, Jobs emailed Hurd to ask if he needed someone to talk to. After all, Jobs knew what it was like to dumped from a company by the board. Hurd met with Jobs at his home and the two went on one of those famous Steve Jobs-walks, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/can-meg-whitman-reverse-hewlett-packards-free-fall">says Bloomberg BusinessWeek</a>.</p>
<p>During their walk, "Jobs pleaded with Hurd to do whatever it took to set things right with the board so that Hurd could return. Jobs even offered to write a letter to HP&rsquo;s directors and to call them up one by one," <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/can-meg-whitman-reverse-hewlett-packards-free-fall">says Bloomberg BusinessWeek</a>.</p>
<p>It didn't matter. Hurd didn't go back to HP, and didn't take Jobs up on the offer.</p>
<p>The reason Jobs was trying to keep Hurd at HP is because of his love of HP. When Jobs was a teenager he looked up&nbsp;<a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/bill-hewlett">Bill Hewlett</a> in the phone book and called him because need spare parts for something he was building. Hewlett gave Jobs a summer job at HP in addition to the spare parts.</p>
<p>HP was one of the most influential tech companies in Silicon Valley. Its destruction bothered Jobs. He <a href="http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/21/steve-jobs-hp-is-being-dismembered-and-destroyed-i-hope-ive-left-a-stronger-legacy/">told his biographer</a>, "Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands. But now it&rsquo;s being dismembered and destroyed. I hope I&rsquo;ve left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/apple">Apple</a>."</p>
<p>(via <a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/10/steve-jobs-efforts-to-support-ousted-hp-ceo-mark-hurd-and-protect-hps-legacy/">MacRumors</a>)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-mark-hurds-hp-2013-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/hps-rd-spending-2012-11This Chart Is Why A Lot Of People Think HP Is Totally Screwed (HPQ)http://www.businessinsider.com/hps-rd-spending-2012-11
Sun, 25 Nov 2012 08:21:41 -0500Jay Yarow
<p>This week, we ran a chart <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-hp-stock-performance-2012-11">showing HP's crashing stock price</a> since <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/mark-hurd">Mark Hurd</a> was forced out of the company.</p>
<p>After we published the chart, a friend emailed to say, "Hurd destroyed the company. Gutted R&amp;D, which was the cardinal sin. It was always an engineer's company. He financialized it. And in so doing, set in motion the wheels of doom."</p>
<p>From 2010, here's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-hp-rd-expenses-2010-8">a look at how R&amp;D as a percentage of revenue fell under Hurd's watch</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4c6add667f8b9a54206f0500-607-456/chart-of-the-day-hp-rd-expenses-2005-2010.jpg" border="0" alt="chart of the day, hp r&amp;d expenses, 2005-2010" /></p>
<p>But, is the R&amp;D budget really why <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/hp">HP</a> is hosed? Probably not. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-rd-for-tech-companies-2010-5">Look at this chart, also from 2010</a>:</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4bfc17527f8b9a0e2f520000/sai052510.gif" border="0" alt="chart of the day, r&amp;d for tech companies, 2009" /></p>
<p>Anything jump out in that chart?</p>
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/apple">Apple</a> spent less on R&amp;D than HP, <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google">Google</a>, and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/microsoft">Microsoft</a> in 2009. No one is going to accuse Apple of not producing great innovative products, despite a small R&amp;D budget.</p>
<p>When Hurd was pushed out, an ex-HP engineer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/business/14nocera.html?pagewanted=all">told Joe Nocera</a> slashes in the R&amp;D department was, "why H.P. had no response to the <span class="meta-classifier"><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/ipad">iPad</a></span>." Apple managed to make the iPad while spending less on R&amp;D, so we're not sure that totally adds up.</p>
<p>It's not how much you spend on R&amp;D, it's what comes of it.</p>
<p>As for the charge that Hurd "financialized" HP, well, that may be true. But, he seemed to be at least somewhat in control of where the company was going. The two CEOs since Hurd have no clue, it seems, about what to do with HP.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hps-rd-spending-2012-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-autonomy-accounting-scandal-explained-2012-11HP Is In A Whole Mess Of Trouble Right Nowhttp://www.businessinsider.com/hp-autonomy-accounting-scandal-explained-2012-11
Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:03:05 -0500Will Wei
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/hp">HP</a> has been <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-hp-stock-performance-2012-11">a total mess since Mark Hurd was ousted</a> as CEO, and things got even worse for HP today.</p>
<p>On top of weak earnings, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-falling-after-weak-outlook-2012-11">HP took an $8.8 billion write-down</a>&nbsp;due largely in part to accounting fraud at Autonomy -- a company which HP bought last year for $11.1 billion.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/jay-yarow">Jay Yarow</a> explains everything you need to know about this HP-Autonomy accounting scandal and why that's not even HP's biggest problem below:</p>
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